Poetry
two
Peel the orange
and it's more orange.
Blue is the language
the sky speaks.
The human spirit is quiet and
defeated in strokes both slight and broad, but
opposition always finds a surface
to lay its instruments on.
A resigned transition of power
cued in time with dinner.
Later, there's a moment
to enjoy the benefits of our situation,
but who am I really talking about?
A gasp of brightness with the realization
there had been someone there all along
dragging their feet and kicking up more dust.
Synonyms undress as opposites
then a few letters are peeled back
and there's just more language underneath.
An element is seen as fruitful.
Light reforms to sparks
no longer thrumming with nature's routine
but data-driven and wanting the glimmer
of an answer instead. So, we took on more work
than we expected. The hours were billable
though embarrassing when I look back at it.
I'm month to month now wondering if
I'll soon burn out. This group text that I'm on
wakes me before sunrise. Mere curiosity
topples whole empires of thought,
helpless in the waves of consciousness
heaped upon myself. I've come to
find, however, under the morning
is only more morning. Funny
how important a subject becomes
when it's the only possible outcome
pulled out of context. Like, there's an ethics
of leaving well enough alone as there is
an ethics of breaching a limit
though it is possible
to overextend one's comprehension
through sheer force of enthusiasm
and miss the point entirely
unable to apprehend the thing itself
until it's out of reach, sent
skyward with the rest of our words
for the common generosity uncovered
before the morning takes its first breath
to say criticism has a natural antipathy
with biography as if a life of the mind were
a post of unassailable neutrality. It didn't
say that. It said nothing. Earlier, it was only morning
then. It would go on to say nothing
and even that was only morning, so it said,
"Peel an orange, and it’s the language the sky speaks."
[Upstate, 2-5-19]
Any writing that doesn't move toward love will crash against a wall or some other hard surface, like that time the brakes failed on a train entering Estación Once.
- Cecilia Pavón, "A Perfect Day"
Ski pronounced
sky could be a variation on love
when you're not looking and only a vital whisper
extends as if to say there's something here
you can depend on. An unbroken wing
or the last bite of dinner is saved for you.
I tried to find Cecilia Pavón's website
to gather some general information about
my new writer crush, which seems to change
a few times a year even though I don't consider myself
all that capricious. I found a Tumblr of hers.
It appears unused and dilapidated
like some shitposting termite
crawled into her admin and filled the homepage
with 2015 consumer "Top Best" lists. "Top Best Waring
Blenders Reviews 2015," "Top Best Ironing Boards
Reviews 2015," "Top Best Pedestal Fans Reviews 2015,"
et al. Strange truisms escape from these untrustworthy
gateways: "Let's face it. The fast-paced lifestyle of today
is tiring and stressful." Someone speaking to their friends
a table over from me at the coffee shop just said, "Ha ha!
All I know is that I don't ever want to work again." As if
any life that doesn't move toward love will crash against
labor. Vehicles escape through fire in harrowing uploads
and leave a lasting impression on the film industry. Whenever
real disaster strikes, our virtual assessment shifts toward reality
as a means to invest in what can't be forgotten, what we see
when we close our eyes, which is different than love, a thing
that dissolves or burns out or is made unobtrusive
at a later point in time. It's a shaky definition, lo-fi
lexicology. I'm really asking for a friend. I spend
my mornings writing these loose poems about the many
ways to say the same thing, often sensing the instability of this
time, whether something will be written in the span allotted
or wasted on free wi-fi with purchase of coffee (cappuccino)
before I, moving obliquely toward love, crash against labor.
A day's unfinished work waits on a hard drive or as series of neon
post-its on my keyboard. Consistency and regularity
alienate as they push these words—yesterday, today, tomorrow—
as interlocutors of happenstance playing themselves
off as near divine agenda. A threshold closes itself
with a silent though furious whisking of curtains, spiraling
into an impersonation of place. Inextricably knotted
to a distant sense of loss, a thread is strung into an uncertain void
that grows darker as it stretches, and believing you can distinguish
anything, you imagine where the string is tied, where you are certain
there is an end because of course. What else could be keeping
this string so taut when you're holding only one end?
Rain over a vast body of water
makes little to no difference, and the conditions
divert relief even farther from where its needed.
The coupon for free refills expired, so I hold my finger
over the date, a strategic response to inevitability
strip mining our last reliable assets
before a clean sweep shuts everything
in an offsite storage unit. A feasible utopia
could be born out of decisions and moments
like this? I'm seriously asking. I had a car
I sold for rent once. Sometimes I see it around.
[Brooklyn, 11-11-18]